One scoop of Ice Cream

In my effort to do away with my cliched "mother tales" I thought of penning down something different. Everyday in our lives we try to eat healthy, eat good food free of grease, free of sugar, free of sodium, free of anything that you think is harmful for you. I struggle hard to imbibe the same healthy eating habits in my daughter yet I eye the large diary milk chocolate that my mother got from india about 6 months ago sitting in the fridge or that Haagen Dazs mango ice cream sitting in the freezer.

People who know me now will find it hard to believe that I was a fat kid and any girl will know how hard it is growing up as one of the fat girls. One bad comment made me change my eating habits and everything I did. Soon within 2 months I lost 12 kgs. Everyday after that I have struggled to keep that effort alive. All through my teens and until the day I got pregnant I counted each calorie I ate and worked off every extra cookie I ate. I can proudly say I am fit.

But life is such a funny thing all that over caution and all that extreme cardio later I find it even more harder to cheat.

Most of us at least most of the girls I know live a life devoid of anything that is close to sugar ever since the day the turn a tiny teen. Why is that we find it so hard to just let go one day and not worry where those calories go. Why do we constantly worry about how much we weigh or how many calories do we burn per week?

A mother's tale...

I needed to get back to my blog, its like a part of me is always thinking of what I can write and how can I pen my imganiation or the reality around me to writing. After in numerous failed attempts and unlimited blog posts still in draft with high sounding titles right from the vampires in twilight ( btw I am Twihard.. and in lost in the worls of Edward Cullen) to our little field trips to the beach. I sit here on my barstool with a laptop on the counter top to actually finish a blog and publish it. You may have to forgive me if you find poor quality of writing or lots of typos today, because time is my enemy need to pen down everything that happened in the past one year in I say about 30 mins before my kid wakes and my husband is done with the so called yard work ( now that is a totally different conversation LOL).

Time is quickly running past me; my daugther who was little baby same time last year is now running around , dancing and demanding us to play her fav song "Shawty's like a melody" in other words she is turning out to be a handful. I don't want to sound cliched by saying a single smile of hers makes my day, which is actually very true. But it is also true that you are kind of lost in this new world, everything normal around you evolves to a totally new concept. You are not cool anymore (may it's cos I am pushing 30) , or may be cos you need to paln your scedule around your kids nap times( which getting to do in certain cases is an or deal in itself) , or to need to stay in doors for new years and spend time with your family. Friday is no more the evil night.. its when you actually get few minutes to chat with your husband and wait in the hope that baby monitor remains noise free for the remainder of the night. You no longer are cool because a trip to down to your local Costco ends being talked as a fun trip and you need tp do that more often together.

My tone in the above lines might suggest sarcasam or frustion or just simple humor. But any mother my age will feel what I feel everyday, its absolute bliss to spend time with your kids and watch them laugh or play or just taking them out for a walk. Or be the first one that shows them how wonderful the world is or how dangerous things can be. Be the first one to hold thier hands and make them walk towards the success and happiness. Treat every joy and every pain of thiers as if its more than your very own. Love them and care for them give them the life you always wanted and make sure every wish of thiers is granted , make sure they succeed in everything the do. But that is the mother in me...there is more to any woman than being a mother, you need all that for ourself. Career, success, life, friends, fun list goes on..the challenge right now is to find the balance between the two..

Sponsor a child

With a tiny baby at home and us catering to her all day, trying to assign meaning to the gibberish of hers, running to attend very little squeak of hers and trying to give her the path of least resistance it always occurs to me, there are so many children in the entire world deprived of this attention. Kids, babies that are deprived of leave alone the attention, but the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. The thought of sponsoring a child has been sitting at the back of my head for a while but having a baby and watching the kind of attention and caring they need my heart feels for all such children around the world and concept of sponsoring a child is more than a mere tax break.

Blissful Isolation

One of my friends recently wrote an email which said "I am not sure why I was so happy when I got to know I was pregnant". I didn't think that made sense when I read that, but now being a new mother and a temporary full time house wife that sentence really makes sense. Being a new mother is dauting task. When your body just craves for the rest it rightly deserves after undergoing a huge turmoil and going through an ordeal called birth. When especially in a case like mine when birthing process ends with a surgery after being in labor for 24 hours. When there lies a tiny being whom you have got into the world completely and solely dependent on you, who needs your nurturing and caring. When the mirror shows the ruins of something that you once called a body. When you are torn physically and mentally and all that you crave for is a good 10 hours sleep, you are faced with a task of feeding the child which is deemed as one of the most beautiful thing in the world frustrates to an extent of break down.


We went through various books and accumulated knowledge on raising babies yet all that mountain of information seemed minuscule before the reality of caring for a newborn. I have heard people talking about how they were suffused with emotions at the very sight of their newborn, unfortunately when we first laid our eyes on our little one, there it was nothing ; no happiness, no pride just nothing. Don't dismiss me as an evil mother with no feelings, probably I would have too but the whole feeling is so overwhelming and confusing. Sudden seclusion from the world , stuff that normal people is what gets you the most.

Wobble Wobble and I Gobble

As I walk or rather wobble towards the final stages of my pregnancy and step into the mystical world of motherhood, I feel more nervous and tensed than ever. I successfully steered through the 38 weeks of pregnancy with no major issue than a rather nasty tooth ache I can say that I truly enjoyed my pregnancy. I am not sure of what my new born will look like or what he/she will be like, what will be its dislikes, what will be its personality, what kind of values should we as parents pass on. Its all seems such a mystery I am not sure if every mother to be goes through all the same questions as I am. Everyone around me tells me that you will learn and become better and how can I trust myself with such a tiny, innocent being in my hands. What if I hurt it in anyway the whole feeling of responsibility kind of suffuses me.

I spend hours away from my favorite financial market news reading and loading myself with all the information that I can abut new born care trying to make myself theoretically perfect (at which Indians are greatly skilled), trying to super clean the house and laundry all the baby clothes in an effort to make my little ones entry into the world germ free. Spending hours trying to deck up the nursery even though it might not know what color its looking at. Feeling of becoming a mother and whole act of responsibility has literally taken over me.

Beside that the fear of going through labor (I am sure they call that for a reason) unsure of what my experience will be like. There is no plan B, my little treasure who has be has been preparing and rehearsing all the while will steer the entire plan. I fear that my husband, the person whom I love the most might become my second priority, if I will ever be able to spend or enjoy each others company without any worry in the back of our minds. I fear the postpartum period, fear of not being able to lose the pounds and pounds of baby fat I have been packing of without any guilt. I fear if the carefree life we spend right now might run away from us forever.

We are filled with hope , jubilation, frustration, fear as we walk towards yet another phase of our journey together, from friends to significant others to husband and wife and now parents. Wish us luck!!!

Biologically 26 but physically ?

Title of this blog might seem very strange and might even you perplex to an extent that you might think the writer is probably crazy. Actually I am not and I am probably more happier and saner than I was ever in my life. I am woman and today I feel I am complete. Yes, I am going to be a mother. The feeling that I am going through is the most elated, jubilant, and every adjective in the dictionary for complete bliss. But at the same time I am regular 26 year old who wants to enjoy life and celebrate the fact of being young. I want to tame the adventurer inside me who wants to jump off a plane and glide like bird, who wants to go hike the Yosemite mountains. I want to quench the craziness inside me by hanging out in a club or go have a drink with friends. I want to let out the fitness freak inside me, who used to run for 10 miles a week for that perfect body I always wanted. But, my life has suddenly changed, chicken curry grosses me out, fat has started to accumulate around as if it were a life saver. Clothes that fit me perfectly make me feel that they might puncture some vital organ inside me. My love of green tea has been replaced by V8 juice. Google search is my new best friend as I am hardly able to concentrate on stuff normal people do.

Thoughts always run faster than actions true at least for me, with all these thought suffusing me to an extent that they might smother me, I talked Hari into going downtown in one of the clubs we enjoy the most. Once inside the club, I saw someone lite a cigarette near me, I immediately told my husband lets go downstairs where there is more room and probably some air might circulate. My fate was in ill luck, whole bunch around me were puffing smoke around me. I remembered the google searches that educated as to how bad passive smoking was to the baby growing inside me. My heart sank, I wanted to dance and have fun.. but couldn't get the idea out of my head that probably my little kid is unable to breathe may be it is choking inside me telling me.. "Mommy please help me here". I decided to walk out of the club and said to myself I won't be able to come here at least for the next one year. But its ok, this is my child and I can do anything for it. Ultimately my motherhood won over youth and while we were on way back my husband clasped my hand hard and told me "this is not the end". I know its not the end but the begining of loving someone who is a part of me with every single beat of my heart.

Follow up to the previous blog- Married Bachelorette

Blame your hubby for all that extra housework

For married women who can't figure out why they always have so much housework researchers may have the answer — husbands. A new study from the University of Michigan shows that having a husband creates extra seven hours of extra housework a week for women.
But a wife saves her husband from an hour of chores around the house each week. "It's a well-known pattern. There's still a significant reallocation of labour that occurs at marriage — men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor," said Frank Stafford, of the university's Institute for Social Research (ISR), who directed the study.
"And the situation gets worse for women when they have children," he added in a statement.
Stafford's findings are based on 2005 time-diary data from a study on income dynamics that has been conducted since 1968 at ISR.
The researchers studied diaries to assess how people spent their time and questioned men and women about how much time they spend cooking, cleaning and doing basic work around the house.

They found that young single women did the least amount of housework, at about 12 hours a week. Married women in their 60 and 70s did nearly twice that amount, while women with more than three children spent 28 hours a week cleaning, cooking and washing.
But it's not as bad as it used to be. In 1976 women did an average of 26 hours of housework a week, while men did about six, according to the study.

Excerpt from ibnlive.com- Lifestyle section

Here is the original link http://www.ibnlive.com/business/index.html